


A New Leaf

by TessellateOcean



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/F, Fall setting, two girls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 12:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18208541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TessellateOcean/pseuds/TessellateOcean
Summary: Thirteen has her routine, and it works for her: meet someone, hook up, and then never see them again. But when one of her sleepover guests proves hard to shake, it may be time for her to reconsider her moves. Who knows? She might be ready to turn over a new leaf.(Similar to the initial premise of, but divergent from, "Lucky Thirteen," S5E5.)





	1. A morning in Diagnostics

          Thirteen checked her watch quickly. It was 6:10, time to be leaving. She pulled on and then zipped up her boots, the high, black ones, her favorites for Fall. She gave one last look behind her at her bed. The person there was mostly hidden under the plump down duvet. Only black hair, an arm, a shoulder blade, and half of one of the legs could be seen sticking out from the comforter at odd angles. Still fast asleep. Thirteen grabbed a piece of scratch paper from the recycling and quickly jotted a note on its blank side: _Had to go to work. Here’s the key, leave it under the flower pot on the porch._ She put the paper on the floor in front of the bed where the sleeper would be sure to find it, the extra key on top, and stepped out into the early-morning sunshine.

           It was a beautiful October morning. The leaves were thick underfoot, but the trees bounding the avenue were still dense with bright, patterned color. She loved this ten-minute walk to the metro, loved this neighborhood with its broad, neatly-kept old houses mixed with new, upscale apartment complexes like her own. She was pleased that she’d moved here, just two months ago. The air was fresh and cool, and a slight wind played with the loose strands of hair she’d worn up today. The sun was bright in the clear-blue sky but it had that distant, filtered feel of the coming pull of Winter. She deliberately shuffled a little, enjoying kicking up the leaves underfoot.

            She bought a bagel from her usual deli and ate it as she descended the stairs into the metro, overtaking the dozens of people who stood stationary on the escalator alongside. At the bottom, the metro station was already fast filling up with rush-hour commuters, though it was still a little early. The cars were standing-room-only, but there was still space to breathe. She liked this metro route. It was mostly above ground. In the mornings she could look out the window at the neighborhoods flying by below the elevated track. In the evenings coming home it didn’t matter if the track was above or below ground; all she could look at was her own reflection in the glass lit up against the black outside. She always read a book instead.

            She stepped into Princeton-Plainsborough at two minutes to the hour. Her commute was well-timed. She smiled and nodded at acquaintances she passed as she made her way through the atrium to the elevator: Darryl, the kind third-floor orderly she’d bonded with over late-night shifts a few times; Erik, the morning custodian of this wing of the hospital; Lupe, the no-nonsense RN who always spared her a friendly glance. She had few close friends in the hospital, only her colleagues on the diagnostic team, really; and most people had kept their distance as she implicitly kept hers, reading her as unapproachable or guarded or uninterested; but those who had extended a welcome to her found she was warm and receptive, if only to a certain superficial extent. Most people seemed to read her as polite enough, but someone whose social circles operated outside her working life.

            She walked into the conference room and found Chase and Foreman already seated there, Taub and House missing. She poured herself a cup of decaf from the machine in the corner and took her usual seat facing the door. The two men were in the middle of a somewhat-heated discussion, enthusiastically sparring back and forth, and glanced up and nodded at her when she walked in but continued talking.

            “You’re crazy if you think they’re going to win! You’re ignoring years of meticulous, expensive, _scientific_ statistics, all of which say they’ve got nothing but a snowball’s chance in Hell!”

            “I’m telling you, the Nets are going to fry the Heat this season! This Brooklyn boy  _knows_!”

            She didn’t watch a lot of men’s basketball, though she’d turn on a WNBA game now and then (one former girlfriend had been a season ticket holder, and had turned her on to it). She didn’t care about the content of this chatter, but she liked the rhythm of it, the comfortable back-and-forth patter that spoke to the easy friendship Chase and Foreman had now. She flipped through the patient charts splayed in the middle of the table while she half-listened to what they were saying. Then they finally finished.

            “Morning, Thirteen,” Chase belatedly greeted her.

            “Hey,” said Foreman.

            “Hey yourself. Where’s Taub?” she asked, surprised not to see him there, he who was always tied with Foreman as the most punctual. “And what brings you here?” she asked Chase.

            “Taub popped down to the lab to bring up the results of the post-surgery tests House made him run last night. And House wants _me_ here to ask me something about the surgery,” Chase said. “I told him yesterday that it all went smoothly, very routine, but then he insisted on me meeting him here this morning. Very mysterious as usual.” He rolled his eyes wryly.

            Thirteen shrugged, running her eyes down the list of symptoms again. The case seemed like a non-case, nothing out of the ordinary on the face of it. The patient, an otherwise-healthy twenty-six year-old male, had arrived in the ER complaining of extreme pain in a certain tell-tale region of his stomach. Appendicitis was summarily diagnosed, and while the patient was being prepped for surgery his appendix had burst. As in all such cases, there had been a risk of sepsis, but Chase said the timing had been quick enough and everything had gone well, the patient’s insides cleaned out and stitched up very shortly, so that bed rest and a return visit in three weeks’ time to remove the stitches were all that were needed. But according to the notes, House (she could imagine his face now, etched into that characteristic frown of deep, unresolved puzzling) had refused to discharge the patient, demanding he be kept overnight for observation.

            Thirteen heard the characteristic three-step thumping of her boss with his cane coming down the hall. She glanced up to meet his eyes as he stepped across the threshold. “Thirteen,” he said in his sarcastic, nasal voice. “You’ve got circles under your eyes. You were up late. What was it for dinner last night: fish tacos or a banana split?” She rolled her eyes in an ‘I’m not even going to dignify that with a response’ kind of way. Chase and Foreman looked over at her quickly, their interest clearly piqued.

            House turned to them. “What do you bet it was?” he asked them.

            They grinned appreciatively. “Don’t even,” Thirteen warned them. “It’s demeaning and none of your business, and really, House, all that intellect of yours can’t come up with some wittier phrasing? Not very clever.”

            “One for fish, two for banana,” House stage-whispered over her, holding up his fingers.

            “Really?” Thirteen said. “Can we just get started on the case here?” She waved the folder.

            Foreman held up a one, Chase held up a two. Thirteen groaned.

“So it looks like I’m the tiebreaker,” House said with relish. His eyes roved diagnostically over her. “Hmm…I’d say, with the hair tied up, the lack of manicure, the very subdued makeup and the dark-colored wardrobe choice… ” He slowly raised a single finger, with a big, theatrical wink.  

            She rolled her eyes. “The world will never know,” she said sarcastically. “Now, House, are you going to tell us why you had Taub do all those extra tests for what looks to be an ordinary, successful appendectomy?”

            “Taub will tell us that himself, once he’s seen the results,” said House with an enigmatic eyebrow waggle.

            Right on time the door opened and Taub stepped in. “Morning. I’ve got the lab results,” he said, holding up a folder.

            “Speak of the devil,” said House. “We were just discussing whether Thirteen’s last sexual partner had one or two X-chromosomes. Did you get the lab results for that?”

            Taub glanced over at Thirteen, mildly amused. “While that’s _somewhat_ interesting,” he said wryly, “the appendectomy patient’s results are much more interesting.” He spread open the folder on the table.

            “The patient looks and reports feeling completely healthy—he might not even have a scar by the end of this—and yet his white blood cell count is through the roof. It’s like he’s fighting ten parasitic infections and five strains of the flu at once. He says he hasn’t gotten sick since he was 21, when he moved from Florida. House, how did you know?”

            “Call it _mystical intuition_ ,” said House in an oracular voice, clicking a Pez dispenser in his hand shaped like Donald Duck. He popped one of the candies into his mouth. “Ugh, that’s terrible,” he said, grimacing at the flavor. Then he shrugged and popped in another.

            “If you’ve got your ‘ _mystical intuition_ ,’ why did you need to call me here?” asked Chase testily. “You said you had something important to ask me.”

            “I do,” said House. He paused for a second, drawing out the moment in obvious preemptive enjoyment of the blow he was about to deliver. “Why is it that when doctors become full-time surgeons they become so insufferably smug?”

            Chase scoffed. “Oh, great, this sounds delightful. Please, do go on.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair to frown up at the ceiling.

            “Here we have the classic case of the smug surgeon: he rinses out the bile fluids, snips out that pesky little killer vestigial organ, stitches the skin closed and feels so good about himself that—” he paused again, to smack his lips with satisfaction, “—he doesn’t even think to check the patient’s hairline.”

            “What are you talking about—” Chase blustered. “His hairline…?”

            “Or, you know, maybe behind his ear. Or at the back of his neck. Or near his _you-know-where_.” He pantomimed giving a significant look downwards, eyebrows raised comically high. Then he shrugged. “The specifics aren’t what matters. What matters is you missed it, wherever it is.”

            “I’m sure you’re going to draw this out as long as possible, until I ask you what you’re talking about, isn’t that right?” said Chase scornfully.

            “Lyme disease,” said Taub suddenly.

            “Correct,” said House, offhandedly tossing him the Pez dispenser. He caught it, apparently to his own surprise, and looked a little pleased with himself.

            “So he might have Lyme disease,” gritted Chase. “That doesn’t mean I should have caught some longstanding underlying condition during the time-sensitive task of removing the pieces of his burst appendix from his abdomen and the fluids it released that threatened to send him into septic shock.”  

            “Thirteen,” said House loudly, apparently ignoring Chase, “please tell your colleague, whose head, by the way, is so swollen with hubris that he can’t lift it from where it’s buried Down Under, why exactly it is Lyme disease.”

            “It’s the only fit for antibody counts that high with no outward presentation of illness symptoms,” she said, thinking aloud. “He might have contracted it when he lived in Florida, had a brief initial reaction, and then been asymptomatic for years.”

            “Correct,” said House. “Now tell me how I knew.”

            Thirteen puzzled it over. “You didn’t know where the reaction zone on the patient is, which means you didn’t somehow catch a glimpse of it earlier. The patient is outwardly asymptomatic; what would make you interested in his case? You didn’t even watch the surgery…”

            “He  _didn’t_ know,” Foreman interjected.

            “Of course I knew,” said House, standing up to grab the Pez dispenser back from Taub, who looked a little disappointed. He popped a candy into his mouth and made a face at the flavor.

            “There’s no way you could have known,” Foreman said. “Like Thirteen said, there’s no reason you should have taken an interest in his case—there’s no way you knew there even was a case here. But _I_ have a theory.”

“Oh do you, Dr. Diagnostician?” said House sarcastically. “Wow, listen up everyone, this’ll be good.”

“You’ve been ordering extra tests on all the post-surgery patients hoping to catch something so you can bring Chase down a notch.”

            “My, my, my, that sounds like an awful lot of work,” drawled House. “Now, would I do something like that?”

            Foreman, Taub, Chase and Thirteen all looked at each other. “…Yes,” they said in unison.

            “Would I really be so petty as to use up valuable staff and laboratory resources, at considerable expense to the hospital, not to mention unduly burden patients with probably useless tests, just to rub a mistake in Chase’s face?” House asked, clicking the Pez dispenser’s head back and forth.

            They looked at each other. “…Yes,” they said again.

            “Well, maybe,” said House. “But just remember, it’s all in the noble name of medicine and helping people. The Hippocratic Oath, you know, serving mankind, blah blah blah and so on and so forth... Oh, and Chase, just to let you know: you’ve become unbearably smug.”

            Chase rolled his eyes. “Thanks for wasting my time. I’m off to do something actually important.” He grabbed his jacket and stood to leave. Then he turned back to look at Thirteen for a moment and grinned mischievously. “But just so this morning isn’t a total wash, will you at least tell me? One or two?” He held up his fingers.

            Thirteen held up the number five. “You deserve what you got from House, you know that, right?” she said.

            He shrugged, laughing. “Worth a try.” He left.

            “Alright, great work this morning everyone, take a coffee break,” said House.

            “We haven’t actually done anything,” pointed out Foreman.

            “And we don’t actually have any cases on the docket yet, so you can either sit in this room and stare at the table, or you can go have some coffee, I’ll be happy either way,” said House, abruptly getting up. “See you at noon.” He limped out of the room and shut the door hard behind him.

            Foreman, Thirteen and Taub exchanged a look.

           “Fine by me,” said Taub. He and Foreman stood up to leave.

           “Shouldn’t we go help out in the clinic?” asked Thirteen.

           Foreman shrugged. “Up to you. But the clinic’s always going to be there, and this opportunity’s never going to happen again.”

           He had a point. Thirteen pulled on her peacoat. She hadn’t anticipated having a morning break; she never had one. Normally she would have grabbed some hot drink and sat in the park across the street, but today, House was right: she did have dark circles under her eyes, because she had been up late. She might as well take advantage of her unexpected luck and indulge in the luxuries of a morning nap.


	2. The bath bomber

            She took the metro home, enjoying getting to see the return-journey view by day, which she was never able to do. Walking up the front steps of her porch, she stopped and nudged the flower pot aside with her foot. Underneath was nothing but the cement of the porch step. Perplexed, she unlocked the door and stepped inside. The first thing she saw in the open-concept floor plan was the bed. It was empty.

           “Hello?” she called out.

           “I’m in here!” she heard a muffled voice from behind the half-closed bathroom door. She hesitantly walked over to it and pushed it open a little further. There was the girl from last night, head resting back in a bathtub filled to the rim with giant soap suds. She had apparently found the cucumber in the fridge and helped herself—she had a slice laid on each of her closed eyes. She’d also apparently helped herself to one of the fancy bath bombs Thirteen had been given for her last birthday, which she’d put away in the bathroom cabinet to save for a special occasion.

           “Oh…you’re taking a bath…” said Thirteen, nonplussed.

           “Yeah, I hope you don’t mind,” said the girl conversationally. “You have this great tub, and I only have a walk-in shower in my own apartment. One of those pleasures I like to take advantage of when I get the chance!”

           “Uh…that’s fine,” said Thirteen slowly. Why was the girl still here? None of her overnighters stayed past when they woke up. Girlfriends, boyfriends, that was another story. But one-night stands—clearly demarcated as such from the outset—grabbed their clothes and were gone by the time she came home. It was common courtesy. True, it was still only mid-morning, and maybe the girl was a late-riser. But this girl certainly didn’t look like she was in any hurry to leave. In fact, she looked positively relaxed. It was a weekday; didn’t she have her own work she needed to be at?

           “I’m Usha, by the way,” the girl said, smiling, eyes still closed under the cucumber wedges. “I realized we kind of skipped all the niceties last night. Not much time for talking, I guess.” She snorted. “So how about you?”

           “Uh…” said Thirteen non-distinctly, still wondering when this girl was going to leave.

           “That’s a funny name,” Usha teased. “Your parents have a hard time picking it?”

           “What?” said Thirteen, confused.

           “Your name. What’s your name?”

           “Remy.”

           “Cool. I like it. Nice to formally meet you, Remy.” Usha sighed relaxedly, leaned back even further in the tub, and stretched out her legs, crinkling her toes above the water. There was a long pause where Thirteen wasn’t sure what to do. Then Usha suddenly leaned forward and plucked one of the cucumber slices off her eye so she could open it. She winked. “The water’s still plenty toasty. Do you want to join me in here or what?”

          Thirteen paused awkwardly. Usha was hot, and they’d had great sex the night before. But Thirteen liked to keep her boundaries firm. What she did at night shouldn’t bleed over into the day, even if it was still morning. If she sent the wrong signals this could bleed over much longer than that. She hadn’t planned on ever seeing this girl again, so already she was off track.

          “Um, I just came home to nap,” Thirteen finally said. “So…I’m going to do that. In case you didn’t see my note, I left you a key, feel free to let yourself out and just leave it under the flower pot on the porch.”

          “Is that like the least subtle hint ever?” Usha challenged. “Should I start toweling off this very second, or am I allowed a couple more minutes?”

          “What? Look, you can take a bath as long as you want. But just to be clear, I’m not interested in anything beyond what we did last night. I’m not looking for anything serious. No offense.”

          Usha stiffened a little. “Well, who said I wanted to be your girlfriend? You’re just suddenly assuming I’m some stereotypical clingy lesbian who’s ready to mate for life with the first girl she goes home with? Should I be cracking U-Haul jokes here?”

          “That’s not what I’m saying, I’m just trying to be clear about expectations—” Thirteen got out.

          “Save your breath, you don’t have to worry about any of that with me,” Usha said, clearly miffed. “I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. I’m just going to enjoy my bath in the meantime.”

          “By all means,” said Thirteen, annoyed at how quickly Usha had jumped on the defensive. “I’m going to go nap now.”

          One of the benefits to living the kind of colorful life Thirteen had led was she was able to fall asleep anywhere, under any circumstances. It came in particularly handy in this instance, when the other occupant of her apartment was a very noisy one. Usha seemed extremely clumsy—sounds of things getting knocked over or dropped, followed by a muffled “ _Shit!”_ kept coming from the closed bathroom—and she apparently liked to sing in the bath. Just before Thirteen dropped out of consciousness she heard Usha trying for and missing the high notes on “Love On Top.” _She’s no Beyoncé_ , thought Thirteen groggily, and then fell into a welcome slumber.


End file.
